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"Good for you, but that doesn't make Steyn wrong."

You are right. It absolutely does not. Nobody is right or wrong on this subject. I may THINK you are wrong and you may THINK I am wrong but that is what religion is all about. Beliefs and faiths. Not fact.

‘Okay,’ wrote Engel, ‘let’s imagine that; let’s imagine six billion people who believe that flesh and blood is all there is; that once you shuffle off this mortal coil, poof, you’re history; that Hitler and Mother Teresa, for example, both met the same ultimate fate. Common sense suggests that such a world would produce a lot more Hitlers and a lot fewer Teresas, for the same reason that you get a lot more speeders/murderers/rapists/ embezzlers when you eliminate laws, police and punishment.

You are right. It absolutely does not. Nobody is right or wrong on this subject. I may THINK you are wrong and you may THINK I am wrong but that is what religion is all about. Beliefs and faiths. Not fact.

This statement of Steyn's, reporduced above, is not "religion." At least not the way I think of it. It seems to me a rational conclusion, "common sense" as he puts it.

Do religious people defer gratification for promises of reward in the afterlife? Do they teach that there is more to life than material possessions and obtaining power, glory, bounty, etc. for oneself? Does it not follow that if everyone gave up these religous beliefs for a "get it now, you'll be dead soon" philosophy, we would breed more cutthroat, "evil" people? More Hitlers?

I may THINK you are wrong and you may THINK I am wrong but that is what religion is all about. Beliefs and faiths. Not fact.

The FACT that you seem to be dodging around is that it is impossible (or nearly so) to live in an enduring, moral society where everyone is an atheist. This is an empirically supported ,common sense judgement, IMO

YOU may be a morally behaving athiest, and so may 10 of your closest friends, but no society can thrive where people think all life ends in dust, where nobody judges you except yourself, where there are no moral absolutes, where everything "depends". Why be compassionate when soon enough you'll be dead? Why propagate when all its going to do is cost you more money? Why wouldnt you be depressed knowing how transitory everything is?

Steyn is not saying you have to have a Christian society, but he's saying an atheist society (ie without God) won't and can't last. Get the point now?